Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich Hughes posted his thoughts on the latest Fedora release with this Core 2 Review (mirror due to Slashdotting and mirror2). “Fedora Core 2 is the newest release from The Distro Formerly Known As RedHat. Updates include the 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.6, X.org replacing Xfree86 and numerous package updates. Having played around with SuSE 9.1, Arch .6 and Slackware 9 with the 2.6 kernel, I was interested in seeing how the Fedora team did with this release.“
Fedora Core 2 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’d really like to see FC2 on the notebook/laptop review.
I’m really sick of the complaints about “why doesn’t my browser include my X favorite plugins automatically”. Because those plugins aren’t freely redistributable under anything except rather draconian terms.
I’m also sick of “why doesn’t Fedora have MP3, dvd movies, etc.”. Because of licensing and patent issues. The MP3 is even explained if you try to play one in XMMS. And RedHat can’t tell a user where to get these things or how to “bypass” the system since that would make things look bad for them legally speaking.
Don’t like the MP3 situation? Gripe to fraunhoffer about it! It’s their fault!
I’ve read a few accounts over at Linuxquestions.org. Some successful, some not. Most of the “nots” seem to be the usual corrupted iso, boot flag confusion, and driver snafus that come with many linux on laptop installs. I’ve managed several FC1 installs on laptops, and will be putting FC2 on my own tonight (first attempt anyway).
Once successful I will post the process in the Fedora forum over there.
Are there any special scripts that you need to write for installing on a notebook?
The problem is that Linux distributors will not install anything that is not GPL or LGPL. Not exactly best tool for job mentality.
If I download a free ISO and they don’t include support for flash, java, or MP3 fine. But if I buy the distro they need to at least make these packages available to me seperately. Even if with some kind of “please read this agreement before installing” warning.
With Linux “draconian terms” translates to “the source code does not come with it”
If “Linux” does not have the ability to overcome obstacles as simple as these then either it is a flawed inferior solution.
I’m not sure if it’s the GRUB or the new kernel in FC2, but I tell you, don’t install FC2 with WinXP, it kills you. I just had to format my hard-drive and install all over again. FC2 somehow messed up my partition table, which I couldn’t fix.
i think is choice….. yes thogh linux gives you freedom of choice it is hurting the newbies. i think the ideal way for linux to make newbies feel comfortable is reducing the packages so much that it would fit completly on one disk. (sure you can give “EXTRA” softwares on cd) the list goes as follows
1. one desktop manager (yups biggest confusion of them all)
2. one web browser (what made IE king of web you think?)
3. one media player that supports all formats (same like WMP)
4. one office suite
5. one bootloader
one package managment (yes nowadays htey are getting close to it. nice work you oss guys)
other additional things
6. preconfigured web browser with java & flash & like that. (last time i used mandrake it had all plugins configured)
7. bootsplash screen (good work fedora ppl)
8. extended winmodem support. (they are cheap & lots of new low end comp come with them. &it is imp since we are talkign about low cost alternative here)
9. more indetailed help on u r pc (not on internet as most ppl don’t know about it)
10. if a perticular distro is for home users only then certain services need to be removed or disabled from start inorder to increase start up , shutdown time.
this is the top 10 i can come up with. well guys its completly my opinion.
thank you
I’m getting tired of ppl ranting about DVD, MP3 etc support. Especially when you cant do squat in Windows by default. Fact is with Windows you can play and MP3 and type in Wordpad…..thats it….nothing else. In any of these Linux distros these days, you can do almost anything right off the bat. Full featured cd and dvd burning, office suite, you name it….its loaded. Only thing you have to do is get online and get the necessary items for MP3s, DVDs and browser plugins. That doesnt sound that hard to me. Especially when you consider the fact that you have to buy DVD playback, cd/dvd recording software, office suite for windows.
On a seperate note though, I completely agree with his conclusion. Why would I run this? Why would anyone run it? I certainly see no benefit. For an enthusiast distro, Arch and/or Gentoo are far superior. For commercial or personal I think SuSE is a WAY better solution. You get support or at least have the option of getting support. Their releases always include first class documentation. Their management tool (YaST) is also much better than anything FC has.
“If “Linux” does not have the ability to overcome obstacles as simple as these then either it is a flawed inferior solution.”
If you are speaking of Fedora, all of the “obstacles” are easily overcome. Fedora has corporate affiliation. If they include without permission patented code, or trademarked code, or closed source code they open themselves up to prosecution.
“If I download a free ISO and they don’t include support for flash, java, or MP3 fine. But if I buy the distro they need to at least make these packages available to me seperately.”
You don’t buy Fedora. You might buy re-burned iso’s from someone, but Fedora does not sell the os. It is free. Even if they did sell it, Livna, FreshRPM’s, and many others all provide these packages free of charge. Put them in your yum.conf and type “yum install packagename” It doesn’t get any easier than that for free.
No special scripts needed. If your notebook has non-standard acpi implementation (such as some HP/Compaq) you may need to flag some boot options to work past them. There are examples of this in the linuxquestions.org Hardware Compatibility Library, and at several linux/laptop sites.
One caution – if you are considering making a dual boot install there seems to be a problem with FC2. I would not recommend trying a dual boot install at this time.
“Especially when you consider the fact that you have to buy DVD playback, cd/dvd recording software, office suite for windows.
you are wrong. for office suite you can installe open office or other alternatives (i found 602 suite to be a good one) for cd-recording you have winxp built in facility. however when you buy a cd writer software you get a cd recording software wiht u r drive. & as for dvd playback i think WMP has that facility also i think realOne has it. have no experience with dvd ;(
The problem with up2date “freezing”, as the reviewer puts it, has been around since FC1, and is worst around release time I guess. The default up2date server just gets overloaded at times and is unresponsive. It worked fine for me just now for example. I hope it will get better as all the hype dwindles down, or edit your /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file and use one of the mirrors close to you.
I am currently having a hell of a time getting video to work in FC2 using gstreamer.
I’m try to use either totem or gst-player, using the gstreamer backend… both are spitting up WARNING **: libgstplay: failed initializing pipeline, error: Could not link video output thread (cs and balance).
Changing the default sinks in gstreamer-properties from xvimagesink to ximagesink is no help. Someone in #gstreamer wasn’t able to help me figure this out either. Some extensions may be missing from the X server.
I think Fedora really borked something over.
I’m new to Fedora (and Linux) too, and Fedora does have some severe basic problems. For example, try downloading the Flash plugin from macromedia. You get an rpm that you cannot double click. No problem you say? Use the command line? As the auther pointed out, where is it?
This distro does have some serious issues, that I sincerely hope they work out, because it is a splendid looking OS.
About proprietary plugins, drivers and other software…
Can’t Red Hat and other include proprietary software on another disc, maybe labeled something like “Red Hat Expansion Pack” or something even more seporate from the OS. If MS includes a copy of Norton Utilities with Windows, it isn’t considered part of the OS so I don’t think these proprietary items would be considered part of Red Hat either. They are also not required to make the OS work, they are just extras, included on a seporate cd (with seporate license agreements – and seporate click-wrap agree buttons). They could even charge for things that costs them money (like mp3 licenses and other such things).
Give the OS away, give the free proprietary things away (like flash plugin, certain drivers, or even other OSS that has incompatible licenses), and sell licensed proprietary software (like mp3 decoders, fonts, etc.) all on seporate cds with seporate cd cases, and seporate license agreements (that peice of paper glued to the cd case, and that text that you have to click I agree to when you install it).
Many other products are doing this already. If you buy a video card and it comes with 3 games, each one comes with it’s own license, and are not considered part of the original product (the video card) or extensions of each other. Sometimes cross licensed products are even included on the same cd, and are not considered the same product.
It seems that as long as it is clear to the user that the proprietary stuff is seporate from the OS and gnu gpl stuff (and they are very understandably seporate) than it should be ok.
Am I off base here?
I agree that server stuff should absolutely not be included with a home user’s OS. A home user shouldn’t need a firewall (an incoming firewall anyway), since there shouldn’t be any software that answers to incoming internet connections (except games or other programs that the user explicitly sets up – and knows about).
I think Fedora allows you to not include this stuff anyway, right?
“‘m new to Fedora (and Linux) too, and Fedora does have some severe basic problems. For example, try downloading the Flash plugin from macromedia. You get an rpm that you cannot double click. No problem you say? Use the command line? As the auther pointed out, where is it? ”
there are several websites with detailed help
fedorafaq.org
http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc2-tips.php
The reason fedora doesnt ship with several of these stuff is
patents
incompatable licenses
contrary to goals
It may not be necessary to completely format and wipe clean the HD if you lose the partition table. To repair/write a partition table to disk, normally you might use fdisk and have to hand enter the sectors/blocks boundaries of the partitions.There is a open source tool called gpart. gpart will guess the partitions on the HD and can also write a new partition table to HD. I have had an instance where electrical outages & fluctuations caused the HD to lose its partition table. The table was inacurately identified the HD as one FAT16 patition when there was really a linux partition and a swap partition. gpart was able to clear this up and I did not lose and data. Go to http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/ to get the source or a binary for linux and freebsd. I think gpart is available on knoppix and perhaps also Gentoo LiveCDs.
But I get a kernel panic after installation and reboot “Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)” (under VMWare)
I am by no means a n00b (gentoo and debian being my distros of choice), but I’ve tried reinstalling 3 times already. New virtual machine every time, even tried all defaults in the install. I booted the rescue cd and modified grub.conf as well (what is this with “root=LABEL=/” ???) This is really ticking me off, because I have NEVER had such a problem installing an OS.
GUI installation routines are overrated. I’ll take the command-line gentoo installation over this any day. At least I can pick my boot manager!
I was really excited about this release…what a let-down.
Installation: 0/5 (lack of options, inability to boot!)
in the release notes
“Fedora Core 2 running as a guest operating system under VMware Workstation 4.5.1 is known to be problematic unless you disable virtual dynamic shared object support with the following kernel boot parameter:
vdso=0
”
I hope it helps
“But I get a kernel panic after installation and reboot “Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)” (under VMWare) ”
read the release notes before you review something
I think fedora is fantastic! I’m by no means a “newbie” but I’m certainly no Linux expert either. I was able to have a nice, clean, fast, fully functional fedora desktop in just 20 minutes and with little effort.
Bluecurve is by far the best unification effort for Gnome and KDE I’ve seen yet, IMHO.
It’s hot, all complaints can be easily addressed with the mountain of help available online and through simple configuration, or both.
SuSE is great too, though not quite as polished as fedora (usability anyhow) and a little too colorful for mainstream corporate acceptance IMO, but that’s just my side of the story.
Even if Fedora (or any other distro for that matter) doesn’t include these, it should be braindead easy to get the stuff. Last time I tried getting DVD & mp3 playback to work in Redhat (v9), it involved the command-line. I don’t know if there was another way to do that or if there is a way now without using the command-line, but if not, that is just sub-par.
I am sure that if he used FC2 a bit longer, he would come up with more broken things. I am anxiously awating more FC2 reviews
Cheers
i don’t know for sure, i’m still downloading, but indications are they still don’t install as XFs/Reiserfs….
so if its not aimed at home desktop users, but developers and servers…. (which is what redhat is aiming at) then who are they aiming at. like the reviewer said – what question does this distribution answer?
we’ve been getting the exact same review since RH 8.0
exact…
Installation: Excellent
Skip everything: null
MP3/dvd: this distro sucks! 2 out of 10!
When will these people start to care about not looking like complete morons in public? Do they even use thier real names? If I was this incompetant I’d make up an alias.
Windows doesn’t include autocad 2004. I want $2,000 software! don’t make me go download it! I sware It’s absoultly stunning how flat out ‘stupid’ people are.
This will probably get modded into oblivian but I just can’t handle this idoicy any longer.
Legal issues people, legal as in possibly against the law, as in can kill your company, as in destroy your stock holders, as in go to jail. Does this get through to anyone? obviously not. In 2 years we still have an army of people writing about subjects they are not even moderatly informed about.
>>
The problem with up2date “freezing”, as the reviewer puts it, has been around since FC1, and is worst around release time I guess. The default up2date server just gets overloaded at times and is unresponsive. It worked fine for me just now for example. I hope it will get better as all the hype dwindles down, or edit your /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file and use one of the mirrors close to you.
>>
It should not freeze. It should post a nice message stating that the servers are busy.
tech_user,
I don’t know about xfs, but reiserfs is definitely supported. Type “linux reiserfs” at the install cd boot prompt and press enter; reiserfs will show up as an option during the installation. I have no idea why they do it this way, but it is there.
I disagree. I think even toasters should be firewalled. Even if there aren’t any servers installed by default, who knows what might happen? A trojan or spyware or something could open up a listening port.
The firewall should be on, enabled by default, but out of the way for newbie users.
I also experienced the up2date “freeze”.
Running yum from the command-line (`yum update`, I think it was) took care of the package updates with no problem.
I never did see a message stating the servers were busy even after a 25-45 minute wait on three different attempts.
In all fairness, the servers are probably getting hammered. Finding a download mirror for FC2 that wasn’t at a crawl was difficult…
Most of the things mentioned are valid, but irrelevant. Lack of mp3 support out of the box is something you don’t want in a OS, but a system like Fedora (and most free linux distros) are not only what comes in the box (or iso) but what isd available on the net. Installing xmms-mp3 is easy and recomended to anybody interested in that format. Like some minor bugs it may have, by the time you install it you may be able to download a fix right away.
I installed RH9 in october 2003 and there were several annoying but not critical bugs (like setting the modem volume to “silent” still acted like “low”) but after runnig apt-get using the fedora extras and freshrpms I got that bug fixed. The same goes to the tools that are missing. You are right on picking on the distro as it comes out of the box, thatś the reviewer job, but I don’t think people need to care on certain things.
Installing MPlayer is just something you as a user assume to do. Fedora gives you a great tool to do it, apt-rpm. They don’t have to distribute every package ever compiled for the platform like suse does (9 CDs!!). Suse make all the packages available because there are not many sources of consistent suse packages. Fedora has a world of oportunities. I am a newbie and I managed to install apt-rpm and synaptic in RH9, the easiest thing I ever did on linux.
do all FC2 users can’t reboot?
this is the bug I’m refering to:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=122966
Last night I installed fc2 on my machine next to xp and I had a fit when xp wouldn’t boot from grub after the install. I ran partition magic from a boot floppy and it showed my drive (that should have 2 ntfs parts, 1 ext3, and 1 linux swap part) as one block with a big fat error 105 on it.
yet fdisk on fedora would see the partitions perfectly but writing the partition table again from fedora’s fdisk still didn’t help.
eventually i decided to check my drive’s settings in the BIOS and I changed the access mode from “Auto” to “LBA” and voila!!!!!!!!! she bangs!
xp now boots perfectly and so does fedora.
Now i’m just waiting for nVidia to release a driver that works around the modifications red hat made to the kernel that break the latest released nvidia drivers. (see nvidia’s forums)
pooh! bad red hat! why should i have to rebuild my kernel to get good graphics performance on a new os install?!?!?! ati and nvida own the video card market. If a default installation breaks either of their drivers that’s a very big problem.
And as for reiserfs support at install time: why didn’t u guys tell me this yesterday?!?!?! i’m half inclined to reload!
really that bad? I have been wanting to try it, because all I’ve read in the past is that many hail the second coming like it’s our savior or something. But after all the horrible reviews of the test releases and this review, I am starting to wonder if I should just save 4 perfectly good CD-R’s for something else.
Fedora is not really that bad in my opinion. I’ve been tracking their beta releases and so far have no problem with the final version 2. It is very fast and snappy. I don’t what what is the big deal anyway. It doesn’t cost anything to acquire Fedora and if you don’t like it then use one of the dozen other distributions out there.
I second your recommendation for gpart. It’s saved my bacon on at least one occasion.
Good software.
Yep, had the same problem with dual boot and grub not loading XP, this was on the test version of fc2, so I figured it was a bug that would be fixed in the official…appears not.
I was’nt smart enough to go into the bios and try the LBA disk thing, I just figured grub ate the windows boot manager, even booting from xp disk and running /fixmbr did’nt work.
Weird thing is FC1 installed and ran flawlessly without the boot loader problems…
I guess the safe thing to do is not install FC2 to the mbr, and use your original bootloader with fedora added to the menu…
No it isn’t that bad. This review is the result of someone trying to get quick copy online. The distro released 2 days before the review. Hopefully we will also see a thorough 9 page review of FC2 – like the one for Suse 9.1 on the front page right now – three weeks or more after the author has installed and had a chance to actually use the system.
I’ve had no problems with FC2, GRUB and XP on this machine I’m posting from.
Paul
I know this is Fedora article, but here is my experience of Debian regarding issues discussed in the review:
I have Compaq Presario 2800. I installed with Sarge beta 4 installer. Base install was easy: I kept pressing enter, it took about 10 minutes to finish, detected all hardwares on my laptop.
Debian has excellent documentations. Everything you need is usually at /usr/share/doc. Need I say about package managements?
apt-get install gnome and you get GNOME. Add Debian Marillat to your sources.list and apt-get mplayer. apt-get mozilla-mplayer and avi, wmv, whatnot works in the browser. apt-get flashplugin-nonfree and Flash works. apt-get j2sdk from Blackdown and you get Java applets. Yes, it is really that easy.
Debian main is 100% free software and Debian is freakingly strict about it, but they don’t deny usefulness of non-free softwares for users.
I even got a warning about my partition table and bios etc. I ignored it and have dual booted ever since =)
I’d like to see some screen shots. Are they available? I know it looks like RedHat 9 but still, I want to see screenshots of Fedora Core 2 and the fonts
So that is the answer!!?????? I’ve been beating my head against that one for a long time now. I have become very disgruntled over this.
thank you for the info about the release notes! I feel like dumbass i am! I will make sure to read the release notes from now on.
I’ll post something later when I have something productive to say.
“you are wrong. for office suite you can installe open office or other alternatives (i found 602 suite to be a good one) for cd-recording you have winxp built in facility. however when you buy a cd writer software you get a cd recording software wiht u r drive. & as for dvd playback i think WMP has that facility also i think realOne has it. have no experience with dvd ;(”
I am not wrong….you are. The point is that Windows by default does not have office, cd/dvd burning, dvd playback support. This is fact. You can go download Open Office yes, but it doesnt ship with Windows. Just like I can go download DVD support for Linux, but it doesnt ship with it. As for cd/dvd burning, Window built in cd recording is a complete and absolute joke that is slow and featureless. As for DVD burning you have no option. For DVD playback, NO WMP cannot play DVDs by default and the free Real player can’t either. DeCSS has to be licensed or illegally (technically speaking) downloaded. The only thing Windows can do that RH and SuSE cant outa the box is play MP3s. Big deal, it takes me all of 2 minutes tops to add that functionality to Linux. It takes a whole lot longer to add all of the mentioned things to Windows.
the dual boot issues with win xp — does this occur with a clean install, an upgrade from FC1 using anaconda, an upgrade from FC1 using yum or all three?
” Dual Boot Issues
By E. (IP: —.bnvl.cox-internet.com) – Posted on 2004-05-21 15:37:54
the dual boot issues with win xp — does this occur with a clean install, an upgrade from FC1 using anaconda, an upgrade from FC1 using yum or all three?”
depends on the bios settings. set it to LBA
girtherobot,
see here ( http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3097 ) for a complete guide to “how to install Core 2 in Vmware”.
It seems there are lots of problems with core 2 and vmware ( http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=4400&tstart=0 ).
Tonight i will try to install it. Hope it works….
Sorry for my poor english.
I suspect it only happens if you let anaconda CREATE or MODIFY partitions and WRITE the partition table. I’ve done an install over (not upgrade) my existing FC1 partitions (just let anaconda format them) and had no problem with grub and my Win2k. Similarly, upgrading via apt/yum shouldn’t have any impact on your partition table.
I was dissapointed by the package management strategy and performance of yum. There are like 4 package management schemes: the Add/Remove software applet, up2date, yum, and apt-get. The Add/Remove applet is not granular enough to locate and install individual packages. OK, so its supposed to be a high level tool, but perhaps an advanced mode would suffice. There is no obvious strategy to install individual packages from CD (as opposed to network). Sure, you can just use ‘rpm’ but then you lose the dependency automation. urpmi is very good at knowing what is one each CD, ejecting, and prompting for each CD while installing dependencies. Finally, yum seemed to continually download and process headers. Is there no caching and control over that? It seemed pretty slow at doing that when compared to pacman.
The author raises some good points but he comments that they should decide who they’re aiming at. I feel it’s a perfect distro for me. Easy to use, but flexible, in other worlds it grows with you. Where as with other easier ones you’ll find yourself with minimal packages and other confinements. Also, he states there is no documentation. Well, from what I’ve experienced, there’s probably more docs on Fedora than any other distro. Just head over to #fedora and they’ll answer any question you have.
Really guys, fedora is nothing more than Redhat, how people can comepare it with SuSE’s YaST, SaX2 and YOU is crazy, it’s fact.
FC2 works like a charm here.
It’s a fact.
I have heard many complaints about dual-boot installations with Windows. The safest way to try out new distros without nuking your working/primary OS is to go out and by a removable disk carrier and tray for a few dollars, and put a spare/old disk in it. This will save you lots of grief. Messing up a dual-boot install is quite easy to do with other distros as well…it’s not just a Fedora problem.
One thing I agree with the reviewer about is his comment about documentation being lacking. When I click the “Docs” tab on the Fedora page, there are no docs! This is ridiculous. Check out Debian, Slackware, or FreeBSD’s pages. When you go to the docs page, you get information.
RH 9 has a decent documentation set. Why didn’t the “Documentation Project” team take the RH 9 docs as a starting point, and just modify them to account for the differences? Strange.
Anyway, I have had VERY good luck with FC-1, and I will be trying FC-2 out soon. It has ACLs, NFSv4 support, and SELinux…all of which are interesting things for a hobbyist to check out.
It seems to me that there is a huge group of elite linux users holding back the development of easy to use packages. Name anything graphical and you get this “sure make it drooly but its not as flexible as…” This seems obserd to me. The tool is going to be as flexible as the programmer who writes it. And anyways, perhaps a bit less flexibility would be a good thing, you have to draw the line somewhere.
Another thing, displaying things graphically can make things much more intuative. You should not have to worry about the structure of the config file it may be editing, or reading a 10 page manual every time you want the use a different command. It asks you a question, you answer it. It appears to me that many linux users are trying to become computers, instead of making computers more home, more intuative. Personally, with the use of webmin I have utilised functionality that I wouldn’t have otherwise, this seems more efficient to me. With a good display you can almost eliminate alot of documentation.
You say its easy to install the packages that are missing from the distribution, and I agree it is. But picture this. Fred, an avid windows user wants to try out linux (don’t start up about that “you can’t compare windows and linux” turd.) He’s just installed fc2 and wants to play some music. He follows the very intuative menu to the “Audio Player” icon. He can’t play his mp3s, it tells him the usual guf. You say he could use yum to install it. He’s never heard of yum, why should that pop in to his head. No he’s going to try that useful menu again. He finds Add/Remove Software. He finds nothing. He’ll then perhaps surf the web, he finds the fedora faq. “use yum blah blah livna blah” He needs to edit this file called “/etc/yum.conf” what the hell is that. What does /etc mean, how do I edit a conf file. After researching all about the linux filesystem, he trys to open the file with gedit (through the intuative menu) but it tells him he can’t save it, he needs to be root (whatever that is.) Lets say he knows how to get to be root, he edits yum.conf and is now raring to go (yeah right, after all this I don’t think so.) He needs to issue the “yum install xmms-mp3” command, he needs a terminal. A terminal? All these strange names! He finds the terminal. The cursor blinks at him happily. (Fred is rather annoyed at its inane grin after all this.) He issues the command. Suddenly a huge list of lines is written to the screen. What is this he thinks to him self, its taking an auwful long time. Should it be doing this, have I don’t something wrong? It finishes and asks him in plain english, do you want to install xmms-mp3. He can now play his music.
Now picture this. Fred installs a different operating system, fc10. He wants to add xmms-mp3. He goes to Add/Remove Software, it gives him a list of repositories to use. He selects the once he wants. It informs him that it is downloading the required information and “Please Wait”. It gives him a list of categories. He selects Multimedia. He browses the xmms packages and double clicks on xmms-mp3. It installs it.
This has the same desired effect, Fred can now play his mp3s. RedHat did not include it in there distribution, and doesn’t incriminate them.
Why do people have a problem with this?
” When I click the “Docs” tab on the Fedora page, there are no docs! This is ridiculous. Check out Debian, Slackware, or FreeBSD’s pages. When you go to the docs page, you get information. “
I have to disagree because this statement shows the complete lack of information. If you had taken a time to read Fedora Core 2 Release on the starting page or on their website (http://fedora.redhat.com), you will find a note about the change and the reference to Red Hat Linux Shrike documentation. Because of the speed of development, writing a full documentary is really hard because of the constant change.
To Harry Waye: the solution for your example already exists and it is called Synaptic (GUI apt-get). Sometime you need a shell (terminal) to solve a problem that a GUI cannot do no matter what OS you use.